"Writhing bedfellows": 1826. Two young men from antebellum South Carolina's ruling elite share "extravagant delight"

In 1826, twenty-two-year-old Jeffrey Withers, later a judge in the South Carolina Court of Appeals and a delegate to the conferences that established a provisional government for the Confederacy, wrote two letters to his young friend, Jim Hammond, who would attain prominence as governor, member of congress, senator, and major apologist for slavery. The letters discussed homosexuality in a guilt-free manner. The author suggests that this nonchalance may have been typical of this class and race in the antebellum South. The author's account of the difficulties surrounding his efforts to publish the Withers/Hammond letters provides historians with useful advise on how to deal with archivists when printing sensitive material.